#that's not the root of the problem

[mollysunder]

I ran into this post again after watching s2 and I'm kind of impressed how s2 sidestepped any meaningful exploration in the implications of Heimerdinger and Viktor's relationship. Instead the show applies this larger pattern where they have characters sort of address any conflict they may have had through a proxy. With Heimerdinger, his failures with Zaun and Viktor are sort of handwaved through his relationship with Ekko and the Firelights. Once Heimerdinger begins to aid Ekko and the Firelights that's essentially the end of his character arc, thus is his change and nothing else needs to be addressed.

In fact, outside of Heimerdinger's ignorance the show vindicated him about pretty much everything else. He was right about the hexcore. He was right that inherent corruptive nature of magic. And I'm not even trying to uncharitable, but the show said he was right to let Viktor die. There's no way around it. Viktor shouldn't have tried to "fix" himself, he should have just died and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

I don't think we've ever thoroughly unpacked how messed up the way Heimerdinger "comforted" Viktor. The only thing that Heimerdinger could really say is that the "brightest stars burn the fastest", but that's not what's going on here.

Viktor's dying from an unnatural cause!!! He's been poisoned by gas from the mines Piltover excavated in Zaun. This isn't a tragedy caused by random chance, Viktor's condition was done to him by Piltover, by Heimerdinger!

Heimerdinger is essentially comforting his own victim, and he tells Viktor that his death is just the way things are, as if there's no responsible parties involved except fate itself. I wonder if Viktor thought about this himself while Heimerdinger was talking to him. What a truly genuinely awful moment for him to sit through.

[the-mpreg-guy]

on a realer note i do think people forget that a huge part of the destiel equation is that cas won’t stay. like yeah we focus a lot on the fact that dean won’t ask him to, but cas never sticking around is a huge factor there

[the-barefoot-hatter]

pediatricians are hard to find.

you aren't broken and other important things a triangle needs to hear

[grouper]

[suzuma-side]

the mastermind… he’s called grain or something…

[trash-and-trash-accessories]

Constantly citing this article and the studies it uses.

Here's a quote:

"That study shows that transmasculine individuals were actually more likely to be victims of childhood sexual assault, adult sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking than were transfeminine individuals (as shown in the chart below).

The only category in which trans women were more likely to be victimized was by hate violence, and even there the difference was small: 30 percent of trans women reported having experienced hate violence, compared to 29 percent of trans men."

[paddysol]

what an entertaining 12 hour stream. time to watch another one! :'D

[vimeddiart]

Drew some space turnips to help with my burnout

[leroibobo]

really do not think people understand the extent to which palestinian sites/landmarks (especially muslim ones) were destroyed, beginning in 1948 until now, even in cities. the oldest extant mosque in jaffa (al-bahr mosque) was built in 1675, even though islam came there in the 7th century

[soath]

shut up about killing the gods, shut up about killing the gods, the only character who deserves a handwritten apology from every civic leader in exandria and a basket of fruit is Miss Evoroa Bormodo. imagine having to listen to the rulers of your blue promise discuss slaughtering your entire world for the crime of existing in proximity to what is dangerous to them! angel you shouldn’t have had to grovel like that and make the case for your own civilization’s right to survive. the mvp of first contact, no one is doing it like her and no one should have to.

[centaurianthropology]

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

[hajimedics]

my fairly oddparents ocs :) tsubaki is an overachiever who thinks she’s mature for her age (she’s just a kid.) and believes wishing for things to go her way is too childish, while kira is her easygoing, friendly, butler-like godfather that gladly goes along with her bizarre wishes. one day, tsubaki lied about being an esper to her classmates so now she has to rely on kira for her “tricks” and “chasing away ghosts”. hazel does notice that she mutters the phrase “I wish” a lot, though…

tsubaki wants to find loopholes in da rules for her beliefs, thinking that she’s gonna be doing them a favor ("I wonder how far the extent of the fairies’ power is") while kira is one of the few fairies to actively vocalize their opinions regarding the hypocrisy and flaws in the godparenting system, so he's somewhat infamous in the fairy world. they’re on the same wavelength. also kira may or may not have worked for big daddy in the past and that’s why he’s been taking interest in peri’s potential

[winbred]

You'd think people who empathize with Sam wanting a normal life would be the most pleased with decisions Sam has made and be more alert on seeing the cycle of manipulation and abuse John has created that seeps into Dean's treatment of Sam. But no, it's always Sam is a terrible for wanting something best for himself or even struggling to cope with a life that he wasn't made for.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[gingerswagfreckles]

Not really loving how my post about the left's love affair with eugenics and blood and soil ideology framed as "decolonization" got coopted into another "wait it's all Christianity??" "It always has been" post." Y'all are sticking your heads in the sand if you think this is a problem with "cultural Christianity." This is the exact same pattern we saw play out in the 1979 Iranian revolution and much of this ideology was coopted from the Nazis by the Soviets and reframed as progressive. This is not an issue with Western "cultural Christianity" and it would be great if Jumblr could stop engaging in the same "there's actually one secret root cause of every problem in the world and if we get rid of it we will have utopia" thing that antisemites have been using against Jews for 2000 years.

[multi-fandomdisaster]

Hear me out: A game of Call of Cthulhu, but it takes place in Hatchetfield and the eldritch horrors that you're dealing with are the Lords in Black